A little bit of job satisfaction

I used to be assigned to my department's family violence unit. It was a horrible gig. I went from working outside a busy district to riding a desk. I was used to dealing with hot calls and bar fights daily. It was quite the exciting job. My new assignment forced me to work in a cubicle reviewing poorly written reports and making phone calls. While a cop always has to deal with paperwork, family violence took it to new levels. I remember going to my first day in that unit and getting briefed on my new duties and getting a sinking feeling in my stomach.

Let's just say I knew exactly what Vic was feeling during the ending of The Shield.

On top of that, I had to deal with social workers, weepy victims, and bullshit artist abusers on a regular basis. As any of my friends would tell you, empathy is not one of my strengths. I used to get particulary annoyed when victims would change their minds and demand that I drop charges. My department has a pretty strict policy that if there is evidence that domestic violence occurred, we file charges even if the victim changes their mind.

This policy caused me to have a lot of confrontations with "victims". I was always amazed that some douch beat this woman silly but I suddenly became the bad guy who was picking on her boyfriend/husband. It made me wish I was back in the middle of a bar fight.

I remember one case where neighbors in a high dollar neighborhood called 911 after a woman ran to their door in near hysterics. Police showed up and got the story. This woman said that her boyfriend assaulted her. She had bruising on her arms and face and it was pretty obvious she had been beat up. They went back to the house and from the amount of broken furniture, the officers could tell there had been a scuffle. Unfortunately, the boyfriend had left the scene so the officers wrote up a report for the detectives to look into. Luckily, the officers had enough snap to get the victim to write a statement at the scene.

I received this case the next day and it was a no-brainer. I looked into the guy's past and he had previous assaults including an assault on a police officer. With the evidence at the scene and a statement, this case fell into that category where I had to file charges. It's always a pleasure to put someone like that in jail so I started on a warrant. I had just begun when I received a call from the victim.

Apparently the boyfriend had come back and they were in love again. She informed me that she no longer wanted to file charges. I explained to her that wasn't an option in this case and I explained why. She wasn't very happy with this and started trying to throw her weight around. Apparently she had a lot of cash and had a job very high within the city adminstration. She began name dropping police captains and city councilmen like it was going out of style. I was trying to be civil when she started telling me how she was going to have my job. The call ended with her telling me that she was going to call the mayor (who she referred to by first name).

Her manner pissed me off so I sat back down and flew through that warrant. I made sure to mention every piece of evidence at the scene, including quoting her statement. I then supplemented the main report including referencing our domestic violence policy including pointing out every area where this case matched. I wanted to make sure everything was rock solid about me following policy in case they tried to raise a stink about it. Then I ran down to the courthouse to get the warrant signed. You see, once a warrant is signed by a judge, it is out of the hands of the police department and has to be honored.

Sure enough, as soon as I got back to the office I was told my LT wanted to see me. He told me that he had gotten a call from the chief's office about my case and it was being transferred to the Special Operations Unit. This was the chief's pet detective unit that handled "sensitive" or high profile cases. I had no doubt that they planned to bury it to avoid any political trouble. Imagine their surprise when I told them that the warrant had already been signed and entered into the state warrant system. He paused for a second, mumbled something about making some phone calls, then told me to get out.

I felt a little bit of satisfaction knowing that those folks weren't able to use their clout to get out of things. I never heard another peep from my LT about it. I assume it is because everything was so documented. The suspect was eventually arrested on the warrant but I don't know where it went from their. I'm sure he got some kind of double secret probation but at least I did my job. One good thing that came out of it was I was able to get transferred out of that hellhole assignment soon afterwards. I guess they were glad to get rid of me.